


a man: no skin, all bone

by artesiaminor



Category: Where the Water Tastes Like Wine (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Weather, Canon Gay Character, Domesticity, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Spoilers for story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25734082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artesiaminor/pseuds/artesiaminor
Summary: The Gray Wolf’s debt is not so easily forgotten and Cass’ past still pricks the skin like barbs, but Charles and Cass manage to find domesticity in their home looking over the water.
Relationships: Cassady/Traveler (Where the Water Tastes Like Wine)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	a man: no skin, all bone

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [ask me too what i do](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24315469) by [VoltageInside](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VoltageInside/pseuds/VoltageInside). 



The smell of rain was drowning out the salt of the ocean. The pour so steady it had made a small ravine on the beach near Cassady’s house, pooling and reaching to the foundation, the water hoping to get an invitation to stay awhile. The trees were starting to droop over the roof, weighted down by the water, their branches skimming the gutters and shingles as though trying to pry off a lid. But the house was sturdier than it looked, and did not give into the ravages of the weather so easily.

That didn’t mean that the flooding wasn’t cause for concern. Charles himself had learned quite a bit on his travels and had done any work that would give him a dime or a story, so he concocted a plan. Cassady wasn’t much of a handyman, but he certainly wasn’t stupid, and could follow direction despite living a life he claimed to be without one. The two of them hunkered down on their plot of land to create ducts and diverters, guiding the water away from the house.

In the end, the water could reach out all it wanted, but their little haven would remain.

“Y’know, we coulda used you down south,” Cassady said. They stomped inside like they were shaking off snow, but the water didn’t come off them easy. Their coats weighed down on them like those rich-women’s cloaks with the fur and the velvet and the beading, but without any of the fanfare. Cass kept his hair cropped, but it still dripped, and Charles’ hair was still long enough to dovetail behind his ears and sweep across his forehead, so his scalp could be a roughshod mop if they so chose. Their boots squelched on the ground as they stepped onto the entryway rug, trying not to drench too much of the house. “The way we writers had fixed up our house was making it symbolic and waxing poetic.”

Cass rolled his eyes at his own anecdote, chastising his youth. Charles smiled.

The interior when Charles had first arrived had been primarily functional, the only aspect of it personal and loved being the desk propped up against the window with the typewriter beckoning.

That was no longer the case.

There was a bookshelf filled with poetry and novels, some of it Cass’ own published pieces at Charles’ insistence; a patchwork quilt draped over the green couch stitched by a woman who Charles had met on his travels and exchanged a story; flowers grown and picked by Cass upon most surfaces; on the fireplace mantle sat a photograph of Charles and Cass in a little restaurant in Albany, taken by a stranger who “ _couldn’t pass up such a loving sight_ ”; and the Lovers card from the Gray Wolf’s tarot deck Charles had brought with him next to Cass’ typewriter.

It was a home. Their lives mingling with their belongings and telling a story of a domesticity neither of them thought they’d ever have.

Cass continued. “It’s ridiculous the more that I think about it. It didn’t have to be such a hovel, but I think we all wanted our place to reflect us. Ya know?”

“Starving artists?” Charles guessed.

“Exactly. Which we were, I guess. But if any of us were handy in any sense of the word, we didn’t have to look it.”

That made Charles laugh outright.

Though they’d won against the water coming into the house, their coats had fought and lost the battle with the rain itself, both of them soaked through and through, into their clothes and underclothes. Cass shucked his coat off and tossed it on the coat rack quickly. Then he batted Charles’ hands away from the buttons of his jacket, undoing it for him much slower and kinder than he was with his own, sloping the jacket off of Charles’ bony shoulders. As though he were approaching a shrine, Cass hanged the coat next to the hat Charles’ hung next to the door, the hat that had not moved since Charles arrived.

Cass admired it as though it were art.

On the table next to the door was a pack of cigarettes, which Cass reached for thoughtlessly, gaze staying on the hat for a moment longer. Charles watched. It was goofy, seeing a water-logged man try to light a cigarette, dampening the very contents of the roll, but Charles was starting to see the poetry in the fire sticking out of the mouth of his human lagoon. Maybe Cass would write about it, one of his, albeit few, more humorous poems.

Cass took a drag and waved the already droopy cigarette, as if coaxing his thoughts out of his head with the smell of nicotine. “Every now and then, Silas claimed he knew how to fix something — almost always ended up worse than it started,” he finished with a laugh.

Charles laughed too. It was funny, but even if it hadn’t been, he liked to encourage this kind of laughter from Cass. The kind of laughter that came after talking about his past, about Silas in particular. The hurt of the past could not be shed entire, but it could be less of a burden if they worked on it together.

When they’d met by the fire, Cass had talked about Silas the way some believers talk about God: blind devotion, higher than all, untouchable. Silas always dredged up too much pain, sorrow, even a little anger, back on the road. The only time Cass seemed to laugh at his past was when speaking of his own failures, and that had been less of a laugh and more a dried up sob.

“Well, I’ve no interest in depriving you of your art. Perhaps we shoulda let the water take us down,” Charles replied with a smile. Cass snickered, then hooked an arm around Charles, pressing his forehead against his shoulder.

“Nah.” He took one last drag, then offered the cigarette to Charles. Charles accepted, but knew he wouldn’t get much out of it, already sagging out of his mouth. “I’ve got plenty of inspiration already.” Cass threw one of his tilted grins Charles’ way, which always seemed to warm him up, even if it also made him quirk up an eyebrow. Then Cass stretched out his arms wide. “Besides, I need to work my muscles sometimes, otherwise I’ll never be able to get up from my typewriter again.”

Charles snorted. They gardened, they fixed up the house, and they went on walks all the time; sometimes their walks went long enough that they both got hit by the feeling that they were back on their endless roads, which would prompt the two to turn around and go home. But Cassady was in fine shape. Not that he didn’t have aches, God knows they both did, but they came from too many miles walking the roads, nights on the hard ground where they barely slept, subjected to America’s seemingly unpredictable weather, especially in the Midwest.

Their lives may have softened since the Gray Wolf’s debt was paid, since Cass finally felt he’d traveled long enough to grind his pain into the ground, but they’d earned that softness and even still it was not as though they were always walking on clouds.

The cigarette was kaput before most, the pairs of pruned fingers that handled it doing a good job soiling the thing. Cass took it from Charles and pressed it into the ashtray, then turned to Charles and kissed him on the mouth, pushing him back into their home, pulling him close to him as though he couldn’t get enough. Charles followed, gripping the front of Cass’ damp shirt, gulping in a quick breath before kissing Cass back.

They separated. Cass smiled, at first soft, quickly taking a turn to mischievous, as he spun Charles around and began shoving him up the stairs. “Let’s get changed. We’ll catch a cold if we continue soaking like this.”

“Yes, boss.”

Cass glared at him, disapproving of the nickname, but his humor snuck onto his lips. He grabbed Charles by the waist and hoisted him up the stairs himself.

Cass’ arms squeezed out a shout. Charles couldn’t remember the last time his feet didn’t have purchase of something. Maybe when one of the Union Pacific cops beat him up and threw him out of the train car. “I don’t think you’ve got to be worried about your muscles,” Charles said, tipping his head back over his shoulder, resting it against Cass’. “Picking me up like I’m nothin’.”

“You don’t weigh much,” Cass replied. “Such a tall man shouldn’t be so thin.”

“I really don’t know what to tell ya.” Charles shrugged. “I eat the same breakfast you do. Go on the same walks. Soak in the same rain. Just can’t seem to put on weight.”

It’d been a point of contention between the two of them, and not without its merit. Charles had barely gotten out of the category of “ _rail-thin_ ” that he’d acquired during his time under the Gray Wolf’s deal. It was more difficult than he dreamed to go back to normal life. Charles used to be able to walk from Burlington, New York to San Antonio, Texas on a half a bottle of cola and a pack of dried jerky, and could rarely afford more than that anyway. If he died from starvation, of lack of sleep, of getting beaten to death or eaten alive, he’d just be sitting face-to-face with the Gray Wolf again, given some insights, and sent out to do it all over again.

 _“I just don’t think about it, Cass,”_ Charles had said once, because he knew Cass would understand. Cass would always understand. Cass had taken his seemingly impossible story and accepted it, and accepted Charles in the same stride. “ _I got used to going without.”_

“ _Well that may be true, but you can’t get by like that anymore. And — and I don’t want to test to see if you’d come back to me after death. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take; and call me selfish, that’s fine, but I don’t want you to take it either._ ”

Charles had not called Cass selfish. Would never call Cass selfish, because he never was. He could be a jealous man, a craving man, even a petty man, but it all came from just loving and wanting and adoring, and Charles couldn’t really find the fault in that. Not when Cass had spent so much of his life being denied. Charles wished he could give Cass _everything_ , so much that Cass could not even want anymore, for the problem with want was that it cast a looming shadow of rejection that Cass knew all too well.

Once up the stairs, it became significantly harder to maneuver Charles, so Charles took his weight — no matter how slight Cass claimed it to be — onto his own two feet and stepped away from him. Then he reached for Cass’ hand, pulling him along behind him as though he were a child.

“Come get cleaned up with me,” Charles said. A blush spread on his cheeks, but he tried to go for suave.

Cass laughed. It clearly hadn’t worked, but he seemed charmed nonetheless. “Always.”

They showered quick, starting to hear the rumblings of thunder approaching, the idea of getting fried in their own bath not exactly a pleasant thought. Charles liked to poke Cass a little, finding out he was ticklish and starved for touch all the same, he took great enjoyment in making him laugh so hard that he fell against their glass door with a heavy hand.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Cass said through laughs. He took Charles by the shoulder and tossed him out onto the wood floor, which made him stumble until he hit the sink.

“Just wanting to wear you out before bed.”

Cass snorted. “I think digging the trenches in the yard did that plenty, you’re just being a miscreant.”

“Ya got me,” Charles said, hands up in defense. Cass grabbed them both and kissed Charles on the mouth, wet mouth over his own. Then the hot water lost its scald on their skin, and the cold of their room breezed over their arms, and Charles left Cass in the bathroom to grab their pajamas. He tossed Cass’ midwestern flannels his way as the night was about to take a turn into a damp cold that would flow like an icy river in their bones.

The rest of the night turned somber. Cass and him turned in for the night slow and quiet, Cass going through the notebook of loose poems he kept on his side of the bed before shutting off his lamp, Charles tracing the round head of the petal-less sunflower on his nightstand before turning off his own. They laid in the quiet while the rain raged on against the house. No light came in from the window, no painting of moon stripes across Cass’ skin, the rain blocked all that out. Still, the two of them looked out the window as though they needed to say goodnight to the world that they’d grown so embedded in, but also became so distant from.

Cass’ hand found Charles’ in the middle of the mattress, underneath the blankets. He was _warm_ , so warm, and safe. He rubbed his thumb over Charles’ cracked knuckles, distracted, instinctual.

Charles grew drowsy, there in the comfort of their little home, in the warmth of Cass’ hands and his flannel pajamas and soft breathing. But sleep… sleep sometimes hurt more than the waking day. Charles’ body demanded it, especially after a night out in the rain and digging trenches and laughing until his stomach hurt, but his mind was another story.

In fact, his mind was downright cruel. The kindness of the day should have been enough to quell Charles’ mind. It should have been enough. Closing his eyes, Charles wanted it to be enough.

Instead his mind whipped him raw and bloody, lashing out for succumbing to hunger, for requiring sleep, for not traveling the world ever still. It brought in thoughts that Charles had no business prying open anymore. His time with the Gray Wolf was done, he did his task, he knew what he had to do and he finished it.

He did what he was asked. He did all that he could do. He paid his debt. He did, he did, he did.

The issue with paying such a debt is it left him feeling like he picked up a hundred more. That he owed the world something, now that he had all this knowledge.

The gift that the Gray Wolf had given him, of seeing the person before them true, was also a curse for so many reasons. They say a picture says a thousand words, and Charles had said that much and more on his travels, and found the saying rang true. The clearest example was that of Althea, the blues singer who’d made ruin of her own world and yet wouldn’t make herself free of it, just kept clutching at those demons she created.

Althea had spoken at length how she’d sold her soul to the devil, how she’d turned her own world upside down, how she’d let the devil crawl under her skin and live there more than she lived in herself. She’d told Charles so, and he knew her well enough not to be just painting tall tales. Still, it was something else entire to see her, stripped naked, looking like white stone, torn apart with the devil’s wings curled around her, him holding a flame to her guitar. Her mouth had been skewed open, and Charles did not have enough time with her to determine whether she was perpetually singing her blues or crying out.

Perhaps at that point, they were one in the same.

Althea knew what she was underneath. But did the others? Quinn, the vagrant boy who’d been pushed away from home with nothing but two dogs and a dagger, it would be foolish to not recognize his anger and rage and transience. But not even Charles could have guessed that he’d become so feral, that underneath that jacket and near-toothless smile was a pack of feral dogs, mouths all teeth, ready to snap at anyone who came near. Quinn was so young, and maybe he’d not been innocent in some time, but he should have been at that age. Instead he was swallowed by black dogs with poking ribs, all red-eyed and violent. Could Charles have done anything?

He tried to remember that Quinn would not have let him. That Quinn, like Althea, like Little Ben, did not want to be saved. That they’d chosen their lives. But what about the others? Mason, the gentle and kind veteran made to hobble from state to state on cruches, ignoring the phantom pain in his missing leg, pretending to be okay with the mistreatment from the world around him. Underneath he was split in two, his soldier — whole but terrified — and the now, abandoned and missing a piece. Or the preacher? A man so caught up in between God and deception that he’d created a war with God within himself. Did they know what Charles had been seeing, when they finally exposed their true selves?

And did they see Charles for who he had been? They never treated him as though they did. Dupree had called him handsome and charming, and though some of her words could not be taken seriously, it was how he was often regarded. Perhaps they all were just taking in his visage like he took theirs: no reaction, stone-faced to their transformations. Charles made damn sure that he didn’t react to their tranformations, even when Shaw became a heron, or Franklin displayed his many masks.

But Charles found it hard to believe that they would all have been such actors. That they all would have just taken him in stride, a man stripped of all that made him man, a skeleton to be filled out by anyone and all. Charles was pretty sure none of them saw him like that, as he was, as his truth.

It hardly seemed fair.

But it wasn’t important. It wasn’t supposed to be important. Charles had been sent on a task, to learn the truth of these people, not to expose the truth of himself. Yet Cass’ reaction on that first night when they met up again after the Gray Wolf was paid, that comparison to Silas haunted him — _thought you were just keeping it private_ — it made Charles feel like the worst deceiver of them all. Despicable, being exposed to these people’s most raw truths, when he came across as though he had no inner truth to spill. Telling all stories except his own.

His job hadn’t been to save them. He knew that. His job hadn’t been to save them, but on nights when his mind is wicked, he wonders if he could have. If he should have tried harder than he did.

Sometimes, Charles’ brain was so full of those final images of the men and women he’d crossed paths with, he’d turn toward Cass and see him as he did on his final night by his campfire: too many arms reaching, bloody typewriter before him, his writing the only thing he seemed to strive for and simultaneously killing him. He saw it behind his eyelids, blood across those pages. As though he were still ruining Cass, driving him to self-destruction, ever still.

Charles awoke choking on his own breath. His chest faltered, and his muscles were hard like stone. He couldn’t move. He stared at the ceiling for a moment, trying to find his mind, to make himself right with the world. Outside the rain seemed to be harsher, angrier, slapping against the walls of the house with a vengeance. Despite the morning, the world was still dark.

Thunder boomed, the house shaking, and Charles was sure his heart had burst inside his chest. Lightning struck next, bright and blinding, flashing across the room. Charles knew he had to look, then. Had to go downstairs and see if Cass was hunched over that typewriter, to make sure he wasn’t bleeding his heart out across those pages, to make sure —

A hand on his shoulder and another boom of thunder, Charles nearly leapt out of his skin. If he’d completely lost all wherewithal, he would have screamed.

“Whoa there.” Another hand brushed across his bangs, pulling his hair back soft, before resting his hand on his cheek. “Just me. It’s just me. Breathe easy now, sweetheart, it’s alright.”

Charles did breathe. He breathed like he was taking a drag of a cigarette, slow and deep, even though his heart hammered for more, now, _faster_ , as if wanting him to pass out again and succumb to the nightmares. His body relaxed into Cass’ touch, but his brain started to imagine phantom limbs — the many hands Cassady held deep within all bleeding for his poetry — pressing on him and grabbing him and covering his mouth making Charles choke again.

“Charles.” Cass sounded frightened. The hand on his cheek went rigid as Cass pressed a kiss onto Charles’ forehead. “Charles.” Another kiss. Charles’ eyelids fluttered but he refused to close them again. “Look at me.”

Part of him needed to comply, but the overwhelming opposition won out, Charles terrified that he’d be greeted with the Cass of the campfire. “I thought you’d be downstairs writing,” Charles said instead. His voice was hoarse, and burned when he spoke.

“At three in the morning?”

“It’s not morning?” Charles asked, feeling stupid the moment he said it.

“Well, in a sense, I suppose it is. But no. It’s certainly not time to get out of bed,” Cass said. The hand on Charles’ shoulder went down his chest and pressed over his heart. The other continued playing with his hair. “You’ve had a rough night, my love.”

He’d been keeping Cass awake with his shit.

 _Shit_.

As though the earth thought it funny, it sent another bolt of lightning down and the crash of thunder filled the air, and though he’d never once had a problem with storms in his entire life, Charles lurched into the air as though a man possessed. “Fuck!”

What the hell was wrong with him? He needed to get up, let Cass sleep, Cass needed to sleep.

Pushing himself up and out of Cass’ hands, Charles began scooting toward the edge of the bed. “I — I — shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll go downstairs sleep on the couch, I’m sorry. Get some sleep.”

“Don’t be silly, you’ll do no such thing.” Cass wrapped an arm around Charles’ waist and held him still, pressing Charles’ side into his body. “Charles, I want you to look at me.”

Charles put his hand over Cass’ and sat for a moment. Willing himself to look at Cass. Willing himself to breathe, breathe like a human being, breathe because now he needed to, even if he could have probably gotten away with not breathing while under the Gray Wolf’s debt.

He turned. There Cass was. Not the truth the Gray Wolf had allowed to be unveiled, but the man. His eyebrows pinched. Big eyes baleful and alight with concern. Lips pursed. But still Cass.

He was being such a pain in the ass. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s enough of that.” Cass kept the one arm tight around his waist, but his free hand went back to his hair, brushing it back and pulling it from his eyes. “I don’t understand what you think you need to be so sorry for. I’ve had my share of nightmares. They’re easier to take when you don’t have to face them alone.”

Another boom. The house shook, and Charles lost all of his air again and jerked against Cass’ hold, which did not budge, before turning completely and ramming his face into Cass’ shoulder. “Fuck. I don’t, I don’t know why I keep…” his thought trails off, but Cass understood.

“You’ve had a rough night,” he said again. Quieter this time. “C’mere.”

One hand tangled into Charles’ hair, the other placed firmly on his back, he pulled him down, Cass’ back on the bed, Charles on top of Cass.

He felt like such a child. This was childish, being frightened of storms, having nightmares. Cass never remarked on it, though. Just glided his hand down Charles’ back, his fingers catching on all the knobs of his spine.

“You want to talk about it?”

Another boom, another tremor sent spinning his stomach into knots, knocking all the air out of him. He gasped into Cass’ shirt, the cigarette smell bringing a much needed relief.

Cass shifted so that he was barricading Charles with his knees propped up, and sliding down even more. The hand in his hair tangled his fingers against his scalp and kept him close.

“I’ll do the talking, how about that?” Cass offered instead. “Distract you a little.”

Cass was good at that kind of thing. Better than Charles ever would have expected. Cass spoke about iterations of stories Charles told him on the road that he heard again in distant cities, expanded and twisted and outright ludicrous sometimes. Cass explained that he’d always liked hearing those, always strained an ear to catch ‘em, because it made him feel as though Charles couldn’t be too far away.

“I don’t think you realize what you did to those stories for me,” Cass said. “You say a cigarette reminds you of me, well hearing some of those stories just makes me think of you. Reminds me that you’re the root. I like that a lot.”

Cass drifted from that topic to more menial things. The restaurant in Albany was changing its menu soon, and it would have that sandwich that Cass swore up and down tasted like sandpaper. “If I don’t like it that means you’re really doing something wrong,” Cass said, which usually would make Charles laugh, but instead he just nosed against his throat again as if he were a child or they were young lovers and he had nothing better to contribute. Cass spoke of his old poetry, some of the really shocking stuff he wrote when he was younger. “You woulda thought I was a Poe disciple. Wanted to be the next writer of The Cask of Amontillado, wanted to write these grotesque things just so I knew my readers felt something. Really, most of it was better used as kindling.”

Then the bedroom quieted, time being kept just by Cass’ deep breaths, by the strokes in his hair, by the number of times he’d dragged his fingers across the knobs of Charles’ skin, by the strikes of lightning.

A spray of lightning lit up the rain, still making Charles jolt but not thrash, which seemed an improvement. “One… two… three…” Cass counted, and then the boom of thunder shaking their home. “Three miles away. Should pass over us soon and keep going down the coast. Not too long now.”

Charles could feel Cass’ eyes on him, like he used to feel them at the campfire. Cass used to stare with those big eyes, hand slung over his knee as though he were casual, but he’d lean forward ever so slightly as though he needed to get closer to the story, to breathe it in. Even stories where halfway through Charles knew it wasn’t what he was looking for, he was attentive, swallowing everything whole. Those were the eyes taking Charles in tonight.

However, this time, it was Cass doing the talking. “Do you remember when you told me about that strange dog that attacked you?” Cass asked. “What’d you call it? The tailypo?” Cass spoke quiet, clearly cautious as that had been a living nightmare back in the day.

“Sure.”

“This reminds me of then, a little,” Cass said. “Just a little.” He brushed a hand across Charles’ nape and rubbed his thumb at the base of his skull.

“I see the resemblance,” Charles said.

It was a little similar, though the threats weren’t living as they were then. The tailypo had tried to rip him apart like Quinn’s dogs could’ve, and had rung his head like a bell, made him only capable of thinking its name until he’d reached Cass’ fire. He hadn’t been able to tell stories that night except for that of the tailypo, why he was bandaged up and terrified, the first and only time he remembered stopping at a campfire and not continuing the Gray Wolf’s task.

He’d also sat next to Cass that night, needed to sit beside him, to hear him breathe and know what was human and real, have a presence outside of his mind. Cass had pulled his jacket off and made it into a rough pillow just so Charles could get some sleep. Charles never thought he’d actually be able to, but with Cass keeping watch, he somehow felt so _safe_ that he’d fallen asleep on the way to the pillow.

“There was somethin’ so strange about when you first approached the fire,” Cass continued, still reproachful but settling a bit more into his speech at Charles’ lack of reaction. “I couldn’t tell it was you for a moment. I had a feeling, but, you didn’t look right.”

A flash of lighting lit up the room for a moment, making visible to Charles the crook of Cass’ neck, the five o’clock shadow that was beginning to take over his face. “1… 2…” Cass counted while pressing a hand between Charles’ shoulders, as though he wanted to hold him there. Another boom of thunder rang out, but Charles didn’t buck, couldn’t buck, and didn’t feel the need to so much anymore with Cass’ hands soothing him down.

“There we go. Almost here.”

“I didn’t look right?” Charles reminded.

“Right.” Cass cleared his throat. “It was odd. Funny in a strange way. You looked like you could loom above the earth, I mean it seemed your shadow nearly stretched to me in that distance.” Cass laughed at the thought. “The fire at first wasn’t very kind to ya. You lost your usual dark hair and sun warmed skin. In fact, you didn’t have it at all, it was like you were a living skeleton. A man: no skin, all bone.” Cass breathed out a hefty sigh. “I didn’t know what to think, but then the light flickered and it was gone. Then I saw you again.”

Charles ran through Cass’ words, poring over them in his head, letting them settle in his blood. _A man: no skin, all bone._

Charles lurched off of him, hovering above Cass on knees and palms.

“You saw me?”

Cass reeled at the sudden movement, but met Charles’ stare. “Well, yeah, but as a big skeleton. Didn’t only happen with the tailypo either, but that was the first time I saw it. It was strange, like whenever I first caught you in the light,you —”

Charles never interrupted. Never. But he couldn’t stop himself here as he grabbed Cass’ face and kissed him, hard. A rush, bent over him and chasing him over and over, chasing his beautiful mind, the mind that had picked up on Charles’ truth before he uttered a word of it. Cass’ lips were dry and warm and he was so warm and he wanted to crawl under his skin, know him unlike anything.

A lightning flash in the room and Charles opened his eyes. Cass’ eyes snapped open, big, and then he was reaching for him too. Placing his big palms on Charles’ shoulders, a hand on his waist pulling him closer. _One…_ Then the thunder boomed, which brought Cass to wrap his arms around Charles and press him into a hug, meanwhile Charles found a bubble of laughter catching in his chest.

The sky seemed to unleash its full storm now that they were directly underneath it. The water didn’t slap against the house, instead drowning the world around them, filling the gutters until the water gushed out of them like waterfalls. And all the while Charles was chasing after Cass with an open mouth, longing and wanting, and Cass who was returning every kiss and holding him tight in a home he never thought he’d have.

And all Charles could think was that the water may taste like wine, but it all came second to Cass.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't find where the water tastes like wine, but when I read VoltageInside's fic, I thought maybe that Cassady's ending would suit the Traveler just fine too. I absolutely enjoyed that story and am quite sad that there isn't more to the fandom on here, but hopefully they don't mind the contrib and expansion of their own lovely work.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Find me on twitter @ArtesiaMinor :)


End file.
